Yes, he’s big and with the tentacles and whatnot. I mean, when I say he’s not scary, obviously if I was at Wal Mart and he came tear assing into the parking lot, I’d book it outta there in a hurry, 'cause he’s got weight and reach on me. And tentacles.
But still, he looks pretty beatable. If he suddenly attacked the Fairview Street Wal Mart he’d fuck it up pretty good and probably wreck much of downtown Burlington, but once the Army sent in some F-18s and tanks, they’d tear him four new assholes. He’s big and scary but he’s obviously some kind of creature, and a cannon or a bomb will hurt him.
Whats the biggie? Bring him on. The Army can take him.
And you’ve seen a picture and video of him, so that you know exactly how big he is and what he is specifically capable of (don’t remember and don’t think that HPL says exactly). Not even the Canadian mind can conceive of such eldritch horrors.
Also, I get the feeling you’re comparing him to the Cloverfield monster, and that’s just insulting. Or maybe Gojira.
Also, never been to the Fairview Steet Walmart, but if it’s like every other one in the world, you should probably just let him enjoy his fun.
I’m a big fan of H.P. Lovecraft and I’ll let you in on my dirty little secret, Cthulhu doesn’t scare me either. In fact, I’ve read very few Lovecraft stories that register anything on my personal Fear-O-Meter. That said, Cthlhu isn’t supposed to be scary because he’s a big Godzilla like monster. He’s supposed to be scary because he represents a reality man cannot understand as well as the apocalypse. Plus he could totally eat you.
Consider this take on your hypothesis, from Charles Stross: A Colder War. Though not exactly in the same universe, his Laundry series is also, IMHO, well worth your time.
Personally, I think aliens, should they exist, (and eldritch horrors too) are going to more resemble the Strugatsky’s Roadside Picnic: completely indifferent to humanity, and probably near totally incomprehensible as well.
Yeah, same here. “The Colour Out of Space” nearly made me shit my pants, but “Call of Cthulhu”? Meh.
(As an aside, I find it completely hilarious that my computer thinks that “colour” is a misspelled word, but that “Cthulhu” isn’t.)
And yeah, I got the sense that Cthulhu was supposed to be scary not because of him as a creature, but because of the reality-bending culture that surrounds him. He’s scary as an idea more than as a discrete thing. He also has crazy-ass followers.
He can’t actually be killed. He can regenerate nearly instantly from otherwise fatal wounds.
Simply by being conscious, he drives people around the globe insane. Long before you’re consumed by dread Cthulhu, you’re most likely to be sacrificed on a profane altar by his deranged and often subhuman cultists - assuming you haven’t become one of those cultists (subhuman or otherwise) yourself.
He’s not alone. There are an unknown (and probably unknowable) number of his star spawn, which basically look like him in miniature: and by miniature, I mean they’re about twenty feet tall. When Cthulhu finally awakes, and the vaults of risen R’Lyeh open, his spawn will emerge in the thousands to consume the world of man, and make the Earth ready for their abominable lord.
He smells really strongly of fish.
Anyway, the point is that he’s not just a Toho rubber suit monster. His very existence warps reality around him, and long before he assumes his throne amongst the bones of this world, most of us will be long since dead in an unending series of cataclysms both physical and psychic.
Well, to be fair, they did, canonically, defeat Cthulhu (note defeat, not “kill off forever”) by ramming him with a boat. So he’s totally defeatable. As far as I’m concerned, even if it’s EXPENSIVE, if one or two governments founded something similar to the Special Containment Protocol Foundation, with 24 hour dedication and some money we could stun lock the bastard indefinitely. Also, to be fair, Cthulhu isn’t exactly the baddest thing in the Lovecraft-verse. Note that also it’s aged a little, many modern readers are probably going to say “So… they’re giant space aliens?” I think part of the thing that retards the scare from Lovecraft is that there are beings who react to humans the way we do to Cthulhu, from what I recall (it may be non canon?) every being in the universe has a set of beings it simply cannot comprehend, this includes beings that can’t comprehend humans that we could lord over in a similar manner to the Elder Gods. Lovecraft-verse is more of a cosmic Rock-Paper-Scissors joke than anything.
However, I also don’t find Cosmic Horror in general scary. Sure, you’re FUCKED, and you’ll GO INSANE or whatever. But I think giving the Elder God’s some degree of defeatability is a PLUS for their scare-factor. Consider a being that has no weakness, if it wants to kill you it WILL, no exceptions. Well… what are you going to do about it? Resigning yourself to your fate is the only option. For me, at least, this reduces the scare factor by a great deal. Why should I be scared and live in paranoia? No manner of frantic, fear-filled overplanning will ever protect me for a second. But once you start getting loopholes that can buy you time, and maybe not SAVE you, but possibly prolong your life indefinitely if executed perfectly? Well, then suddenly you get a reason to be afraid, to live and cower and plan for every contingency. Much scarier, IMO.
The stars weren’t right. Cthulhu woke up early much the same way we wake up early, look at the alarm clock and figure out it isn’t time to wake up yet.
I agree. I don’t find the cosmic horror scary because I have a hard time buying the idea that knowing more about reality will drive people insane. I do wonder if the atomic age would have influenced Lovecraft had he lived long enough.
I have to admit, one of the reasons I like about Lovecraft is that you can see his fear of miscegenation in his writing. “The Shadow Over Innsmouth” is my favorite with “Herbert West–Reanimator” coming next. It does make a lot of modern readers uncomfortable. I know some Lovecraft readers who go so far as to claim that the man wasn’t a racist xenophobe. However, his attitudes towards other races was something he shared with many other Americans of his era.
It’s not even that, there’s something that just feels logically wrong with it. If we lack the ability to COMPREHEND something, then we just would filter it out and not notice it, it would be incredibly odd from any sort of biological or philisophical standpoint to just point blank go insane from it. If we can’t comprehend Cthulhu because he extends into other dimensions… well, Flatworld and all that. We’d be more CONFUSED at how he teleported or disappeared. We may feel slightly uneasy, or that something is a tad off, but we’d be shitting our pants running away anyway, so it’s not like that’s going to tip us over the edge.
Contrawise, most of us live in conditions that would drive a man from 1900 insane already. (I love my city, but the social pressures are bizarre. And that doesn’t even mention hurtling about like a madman on the roads.) We grasp concepts… even if partially, that hold inherent contradictions, and have some shadow of the true understanding of the universe. (Relativity, quantum mechanics.)
Perhaps we would go insane. But we understand, to some degree, insanity now. We can use it.
All Great Cthulhu rising would do now is teach us some more information and give him a self-forging depleted uranium spear through his chest.
That is a funny thought. Hyperpartisanship as a means of retaining one’s identity against insanity.
I think your missing the point. The real horror is that Cthulhu is unbeatable/unknowable. Madness is inevitable, defeat is inevitable, destruction is inevitable. The best you can hope for is that it eats you first.